The Tenth Awakens (Maraukian War Book 1)

by Michael Chatfield

  Crisidium had changed since Mark had seen it with a sea of Maraukian bodies lying in front of its walls.

  There were now foundations going in beyond the wall, expanding into what had been the abattoir for further walls. The armorite plating had been pulled back in sections, revealing the clear domes that covered marketplaces, the palace set into the mountain range, the parks and observatories people could now take a transport tube to that looked over the armored city-state. Small ground transports landed in the now repaired harbor alongside ships that had survived, doing a brisk business—taking off for the legionnaire’s camp, to Gtrul and settlements that had been re-established along the massive river and the ocean beyond. A landing pad had been created alongside the mountain range for larger transports and drop-ships.

  The drop-ship settled down; the ramps opened as unloading bots piled out, carrying supplies to their designated points. Mark could see the outline for a hangar extending into the mountain. Crisidium might be enjoying new freedom but they hadn’t forgotten their lessons, as was seen by the military increase in weaponry and armorite walls.

  Mark and the other Phantoms wandered out, scanning the area and naturally checking their M19As for those without suits. All of the trainers turned leaders had the few that had been made by Crisidium and Gtrul, so Chyna, Mark, and Ava checked their M20s under the wary eyes of the Crisidium army holding their older M17s and composite armor with armorite plates overtop. They’d only had limited Jupiter-armored personnel but it was another thing that was being worked on as first-generation Jupiter—the kind only given to planetary military forces—could be seen on a few.

  A squad of royal guard wore their Jupiter-powered armor, only able to use it as they were “on loan” by the Ninth.

  Ava and Chyna unsealed their helmets. Immediately, the royal guard took a knee and looked down, with the army doing the same.

  “Captain Serouti. Good to see you.” Ava’s voice sounded slow and odder than what Mark and the others were used to. “Will you please get out of the dirt? It’s rather annoying trying to have a conversation with one person looking at the ground.”

  “Yes, my princess.” He rose, amusement in his voice. “We’ve prepared transports for you all.”

  Mark looked at the ground hoppers, basically a high-output anti-grav accelerator with some controls and a hood. “I don’t think—”

  “Mark, Chyna and I will make our own way to the palace,” she said, drawing the same conclusion. “The rest of the Phantoms will ride in the transports.”

  “Very well, my princess.”

  The Phantoms were already making for the transports as Ava and Chyna replaced their helmets. Mark rose into the air, holding his arms to his side and taking the apex of the arrow as Chyna and Ava joined him. As they sped up and flew over the opened Crisidium, people pointed up at them through the viewing domes.

  “Sarah, can you open us a door in case they don’t?”

  “Understood. Handshake protocol. I’m in their system—ugh, civilian grade,” she said in mild disgust. “Accessing controls. Laying a back door. Opening hatch above the palace.”

  A caret appeared, marking the man-sized hatch above the palace. It opened as they came closer. Mark dropped in first, floating inside of the armor shield above Crisidium. Ava and Chyna fell behind him.

  They looked down onto the entrance into the palace gardens that lined the sides of the massive structure built into and then out of the mountain. The king was being pulled back by his guards as they trained their weapons on the three suits hanging in the air.

  Ava dove for the ground rapidly, like a speeding bullet. She took off her helmet as her suit hovered, still moving toward the high king and his family. Her suit split and she jumped to the ground, wearing a white dress with colorful blue cloth running from her neck down the length of her body.

  Chyna did the same, coming out in Crisidium dress, wearing an immaculate white tunic with the symbol of the household of the high king of Crisidium next to the Phantom’s standard on his chest—one in blue and the other in holographic form.

  Mark grinned as he landed, still wearing his suit. The guards relaxed but wary of the unknown Mark represented as he stood there, watching the events unfold.

  Ava’s mother was now shorter than her daughter by a half foot. It was obvious where Ava got her legs and looks from, Mark could see. She embraced her daughter; Ava’s two younger brothers raced away from their nannies and tutors to their sister, pestering her about her suit and why she was so much taller. Also older looking. Ava’s mother pushed her away a few times before she hugged her again, studying how her daughter had changed. Her father smiled, looking upon his family happily.

  Chyna nodded to Captain Froleck Taleel—his son, Sarah informed Mark—obvious pride in his eyes.

  “Why don’t you lot go on in and get caught up. I’ll get someone to find room for the suits and I’ll wait for the others.”

  They started to complain and turned back to Mark.

  “I’m just going to give them a few rules and then let them run free. I’ll look after the suits. So shut up. I’ll see you at this meal or whatever in three days.”

  Both Chyna and Ava had made Mark agree to come; apparently the high king wanted to thank him and he liked to do it in a big way.

  They didn’t need any further encouragement. Ava and her family led the way; Captain Taleel dropped back. Chyna pat his son on the back as they started a quiet conversation, leaving Mark, the royal guard, and the two floating suits. Mark turned on his anti-grav, seemingly lying in mid-air with his arms across his stomach without a care in the world as the transports arrived in front of the palace with the other Phantoms unloading. Mark turned and dropped to his feet to walk to the group of Elves.

  “All right, you sorry bastards. Let’s go get those suits.”

  Grins appeared on their faces as Chyna and Ava’s suits obediently followed behind him, floating in mid-air.

  The Phantoms walked out of the palace grounds and through the streets, quickly gathering a crowd that asked questions, staring and touching the Phantoms as they entered the workshops of Crisidium, another structure along the mountain ridge. Everyone who was not an merger was pushed away by angry workers trying to do their jobs.

  Unhappily, they wandered away as the Phantoms walked through the labyrinth that was the workshops. Here and there, modern tools could be seen, new and clean, being put to work on anything from anti-grav engines to view screens.

  Old techniques were still at work, with handcrafted metal and woodwork coming from some shops. They walked deeper, the candlelight being replaced by shoddy electrical lights.

  “All right, this will just not do.” Mark saw sparks arcing from a bad power conduit. “You keep going. I’m going to see what I can do. Sarah, pull up power overlay.”

  “Where do you need us, boss?” Mikael slung his rifle; the rest did the same, begrudged grins on their faces.

  “Take a contubernium to the reactor—something looks iffy. Reese, take another to check the plasma conduits. Amelia, you’re with me. We’re going to check all of these damned faults.”

  The group dispersed. Mark’s hand turned into a wrench as he pulled off a power panel.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” A man got up from his worktable.

  “Fixing this row of lights. There.” Mark removed the corroded wires; his nanites ate the rust as he reconnected them to the power outlet. A line of previously unused lights flashed into existence, brightening the entire area.

  “Then by all means, keep at it.” The man blinked, now able to see the armed eight-and-a-half-foot armored man and nearly as tall others around him, pulling out power lines, splicing them, replacing them and fixing any problems in the lines as rows of lights came on. The dull light made the cut-out caves seem as if they were in sunlight.

  “Ah, that’s where I put it!” A worker picked up a long-lost tool.

  “Found the problem in the reactor. They’ve been using unre
fined helium.”

  Mark cringed. “Have you told them what that was doing to the reactor?”

  “Yes. Before, it seems they didn’t have enough money to buy the helium-3 from us. Now they can and know what the unrefined helium was doing, they put in an order with the base.”

  “Did you talk to them about setting up maybe a refinement plant on the river? Then they could sell it to the transport there, have a near unlimited supply and pay less for it?”

  “I was just about to tell them that.”

  “Sure you were.”

  “I’ve got our people working on the injectors and the fuel lines, cleaning up all the gunk that they can.”

  “Good work, Mikael. We’re slowly working our way toward you. Keep me updated.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Where can I get a tool like that?” a worker asked as Mark’s nanites spliced two power cables together; the rest in the line came alive and the nanites trickled back to Mark’s suit.

  “You can’t get one like this unless you’re in the Ninth. Though all you need is a splicer.” He scanned the area, seeing what he needed. “Mind if I borrow this?”

  “All right.” The owner of the tool turned back to the grav sled he was working on.

  “With this, I can pull off the insulator.” He demonstrated what he was doing, his suit shining light on his work area as more people gathered around.

  “Then I take these two wires and splice them together. Put a bit of sealing tape on it and move onto the next one. You try.” He gave the tool to the worker, who repeated the procedure on another split in the wire. He passed the tool onto others, each of them getting the hang of it until the wire was done.

  “Now this row is done.”

  “Sarah, power.” The lights came online, with an air recycler that the workshop desperately needed cooling down the hot and humid space and eliminating the odors of thousands of people working in an enclosed space.

  “What is that thing?” one of the workers asked.

  “An air recycler. Here, I’ll show you one.” He took them to a broken one, proceeding to pull it apart and explain why he was doing so. Here and there, Phantoms where giving impromptu lessons, letting the people in the workshops fix their own lights and the multitude of new tech gadgets they’d had put in but never seemed to work.

  “Good to see you, Reese.”

  “Having fun, boss?”

  “Not too bad. Nearly done with all of the little bits. How’re the conduits?”

  “Some of them were placed in general walkways. Had one beaten down with a sledgehammer because carts where having a hard time getting through.”

  “Sledgehammers?” Plasma conduits did exactly what it sounded like; they moved plasma from the core to heating systems throughout the city, bleeding off heat and energy as they went. The pipes were resilient to deal with the heat and pressure the plasma put on them. Yet hitting them with a sledgehammer was a quick way to have liquid as hot as the sun vent through an even minute crack and turn the surrounding area into an instant oven.

  “Yes, sir. We’ve corrected their way of thinking and buried the pipes deeper and we’re working on secondary bleed-off relays. We were thinking of putting them in a way to link up to the walls to be a nice surprise to any would-be intruders.”

  “I like your thinking, Reese. Keep it up.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “Sarah, system diagnostic?”

  “Good. The rest of the problems—other than the plasma conduit—they should be able to fix.”

  “All right. Get your people fixing anything that they see needs it but moving into the forges area of the caves.”

  “Yes, sir.” Reese turned to find his people.

  Mark stepped out of his suit, using it, Ava’s, and Chyna’s remotely with Sarah’s help to fix any issues he could find.

  “All right, better. Let’s go and get those damn suits, I say.”

  The Phantoms were anxious, grouped together outside of a sealed armorite vault. Mark input the code Pullo had given him to open the room. Inside, there was a clean room that had been purposefully cut from rock with straight lines and a legionnaire crew to one side working with a forge. Mark waved away their salutes before they could finish them. Behind them and along the wall, there were nanite tanks with Crisidium-trained morphers working. Though all of that was lost on the Phantoms as they looked at the thirteen suits that lined the walls.

  Each of the Phantoms who had won the lottery stood in front of their suit. One by one, they opened them. Their clothes returned to nanites as they settled inside. Their suit sealed around them, booted up for the first time and adjusted to their users.

  Mark nodded approvingly as the first thing they did was load their internal magazines, slap on high-density ammunition blocks and secure their M20s. “All right. Go and have fun, you lot.”

  The majority of them fell forward, using anti-grav as they accelerated out of the workshop’s tunnels and into the sealed Crisidium.

  “Now, do you guys want your suits?” Mark laughed as the answers came back. “All right, all right. Well then, let’s get to it. Sarah, the parts.”

  Through the opened vault door, a line of mover robots came in, carrying crates of materials that they dropped.

  “In those containers are carbon hendral plates. We just have to form them and make the rest.” He sent them a sketch of what they had to do as he put his hands into a nanite vat. A few others joined him as he sent them parts to work on. They knew the Pluto-powered armor as intimately as Mark and the development team did. They set to work as parts were dropped into the nanite vats; the nanites swarmed as small parts and then a form started to come together. Every person was in charge of one small section, which was then grouped together. Once they had all of that one thing, they would move onto the next thing and the next. Starting from the smallest building blocks.

  It seemed like an eternity as they finished the first. Their NIAIs released chemicals and hormones, bringing them clarity.

  At some point, the rest of the Phantoms returned to see what their brothers and sisters were doing. They jumped in, taking the lion’s share on their relatively rested systems.

  They lost the feeling for time as they worked continuously, their NIAIs taking care of the physiological needs—releasing stored organic and inorganic energy so there was no need to pause.

  The Phantoms who already had suits purposefully took on most of the work, tiring themselves out as they made the largest and the most complex parts.

  Anti-grav lifts picked up and threw parts from one vat to another, grouping everything together as suit after suit began to form. Then finally they were done. Mark input the coding and they were pulled from the nanite tanks. Nanites streamed from their deadly frames as their wearers practically rushed into them.

  The ones who had gotten their suits first happily passed out as Mark watched the rest fly out as the first group had. Before he, too, passed out.

  Mark awoke in a suit, not knowing how he got there but more comfortable than he’d find any bed. Someone tapped on his face plate. “What?” he groaned through his speakers; nanites cleared the fluff from his eyes as he woke up fully.

  “Dinner, you dolt,” Ava said, wearing her own suit.

  “That’s in two days. Let a guy get some sleep.”

  “It’s today. You spent two days making suits.”

  “Oh,” he said as Sarah brought up the date on his HUD—mercifully on the lowest light setting and keeping his main optical sensors dimmed. “Well then. What am I wearing?”

  “A suit.”

  “Okay. Let’s go. Lead on.”

  “You’re going to sleep in there until we get to the palace, aren’t you?” Ava sighed.

  “Yep. See you in a few.” Mark let sleep take him again as Sarah walked him. He’d grown used to it, catching a quick five minutes whenever possible.

  It felt as if he’d barely closed his eyes when he opened them again. Sarah brought him awake slowly as they
walked into the palace, a royal guard around them. Mark snorted at the irony.

  “You awake?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  Ava stepped out of her suit first in a sweeping light dress. Mark followed after she looked over him severely.

  “Clothes, adjust.”

  “Bu—” Seeing there was no sense fighting, he sent her command to his nanite clothing. He was a guy, after all, and she was nothing less than stunning in her dress. He tried to look away, which he got reprimanded for as his suit moved around him, changing colors until she approved, walking around him.

  She sent commands until the suit worked to emphasize Mark’s build instead of fall from it.

  “Not bad.” Ava tucked her arm in his.

  “Now we’re ready. Let’s go.” Mark could see other guests looking at them as they ascended the steps. Hell, so where the guards and the servers. He hated these events with a passion and wished sorely he was back inside of his suit. Which was sealed and flying to a vantage point Ava’s was already going for.

  He made to look behind.

  “Don’t even think about it.” Ava said as if reading his mind, her exotic eyes smoky as he gulped and looked forward.

  He would much rather be charging a trench than the palace, he decided as they were announced and everyone in the lobby of the palace turned to look at Ava and Mark.

  Mark felt his connection to Chyna stronger than it had been anywhere in Crisidium as he locked eyes with the man, silently pleading. But the man smiled serenely and raised a glass as if in toast and turned back to his conversation.

  When I get my hands on him… Mark promised himself as Ava worked the room, her arm bringing him around and she gave him prompts and such until they’d done the entire room. Then as he thought he was going to be able to get away, someone thought it was necessary to announce dinner was about to be served. Joy.

  Mark was seated to the left of the high king, probably a high seat of honor the way he was getting stares from everyone. But he didn’t much care for it as he felt the chair crack.